Bernard Madoff’s Courtroom Confession About His Ponzi Scheme • Hacker News Board

Re: Bernard Madoff’s Courtroom Confession About His Ponzi Scheme

#21

Post by vinutheraj » Mon, Mar 16, 2009, 5:43 PM UTC

jacoblyles wrote: post #16

gnaritas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because their fortunes are equally huge. They could give a lot more. Looking at Gates, I feel like his foundation is nothing more than a shelter for his money, he only gives just enough to meet the legal requirement for a foundation and invests the bulk of it to keep the fortune growing.

From previous threads, I know you don't like rich people and are personally offended by income inequality. But attacking one of the world's largest charitable benefactors for not doing enough in your not-so-humble estimation strikes me as petty. Gates has the wisdom and guts to tackle such unsexy causes as malaria in the third world. Because Bill Gates exists, there is substantially less suffering in the world. That'…

Because Bill Gates exists, there is substantially less suffering in the world.

Hehe ... I don't think the windows vista users will agree with you !! [:D] ( sorry ! I couldn't resist it )

Re: Bernard Madoff’s Courtroom Confession About His Ponzi Scheme

#22

Post by jhancock » Mon, Mar 16, 2009, 6:42 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #14

defen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone who works for a ~1 billion dollar fund, and he says that mailing out (legit) quarterly reports on time is a 10-person job. So there's no way Madoff falsified a 65-billion dollar fund by himself.

Sending out legit reports must take manpower to collect all the data. But fake reports might be easy to generate semi-automatically. I'm sure you're right, though: a lot of people must have been in on it, and he's covering for them.

yep...another reason against "secret" banking. Privacy is good, but should be limited to within the bounds of non-criminal behavior. In his "confession" he talks about the vast amounts of money sitting in Chase Manhattan Bank. Noone can park billions in a bank without the bank CEO knowing about it and closely monitoring what the depositor is doing (or not doing).

Re: Bernard Madoff’s Courtroom Confession About His Ponzi Scheme

#23

Post by gnaritas » Mon, Mar 16, 2009, 10:42 PM UTC

jacoblyles wrote: post #16

gnaritas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because their fortunes are equally huge. They could give a lot more. Looking at Gates, I feel like his foundation is nothing more than a shelter for his money, he only gives just enough to meet the legal requirement for a foundation and invests the bulk of it to keep the fortune growing.

From previous threads, I know you don't like rich people and are personally offended by income inequality. But attacking one of the world's largest charitable benefactors for not doing enough in your not-so-humble estimation strikes me as petty. Gates has the wisdom and guts to tackle such unsexy causes as malaria in the third world. Because Bill Gates exists, there is substantially less suffering in the world. That'…

> From previous threads, I know you don't like rich people

You are mistaken.

> and are personally offended by income inequality

No, just excessive income inequality. There's something wrong with a system that allows one individual to amass more wealth than the bottom 40% of the population combined. That's a broken system that's far too tilted to favor the individual over the society as a whole. I don't have anything against rich people, I have something against the system that allows it to such excess.

Stating my opinion is not attacking, all I said was they could give more, which is a fact. The foundation is required to give 5% a year to avoid most taxes, which seems to be all they give, investing the other 95% to grow the endowment without taking into consideration of the harm that 95% could be bringing to the world...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx0...

That strikes me as them being more worried about making money than actually helping people.

> but I guarantee you those masses would not use his money in nearly as useful ways

No you can't, you can only guess.

> But attacking him for how he chooses to fight malaria - it boggles my mind.

You have a strange definition of attacking. I didn't attack them, and I'm not dissing the good they do but it's being blind to not see that they don't do as much as they can, they do as much as the law requires them too. That says something whether you want to see it or not.

Re: Bernard Madoff’s Courtroom Confession About His Ponzi Scheme

#24

Post by byrneseyeview » Tue, Mar 17, 2009, 12:03 PM UTC

jeremynolan wrote: post #7

byrneseyeview wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Madoff is going to spend the rest of his life broke and in jail. For someone as rich as he was, he didn't live that swanky a lifestyle, and gave a lot to charity. Meanwhile, fantastically greedy people like Buffett and Gates are still out of jail and enjoying what they do. Dishonest people with an insatiable need to be loved and accepted should read this. Unfortunately, they're generally told that their instincts are…

So if he was not greedy, why did he started the Ponzi scheme in first place?

Read his testimony. He started it because investors expected him to be able to make money; when he couldn't do it, he faked it.

The guy charged zero fees on his money management business. He could have charged 2 and 20, and had an income of $1-$2 billion by this point.

If you look at how he spent the money he did have, it wasn't on whores and blow. He gave money away to charities, he got onto boards -- he made himself part of the establishment, because he wanted people to love him. If he'd stayed a market-maker and never given money away, people wouldn't have looked up to him for decades, but they wouldn't loathe him now, either. He'd just be another successful guy who created a lot of wealth and didn't particularly need approval.